Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"Xenogenesis" is a 12-minute live action short film from over 35 years ago written and directed by James Cameron and Randall Frakes. And while one of them went on to become one of the most defining filmmakers of the last decades, the other quickly disappeared and did not manage a great career. This does not mean, however, I am a big fan of Cameron. Actually, I am not. I found "Terminator" and "Avatar" okay, but never really liked "Titanic". Anyway, one of the actors in this short film here went on to write parts of several later Cameron films. Still "Xenogenesis" looks a lot like style over substance for me, like Cameron's other films as well. It's all about great special effects and the story and character development clearly suffers from Cameron's focus on technical aspects. I can forgive him here as he was in his early 20s when he made this one, but I cannot forgive him for most of his other works. Not recommended.
Michael_Elliott
Xenogenesis (1978) ** 1/2 (out of 4) I've read reports that this, Cameron's first short, actually cost around $20,000 to produce, which is an extremely large amount for a short film. If it's true then I guess even at an early age the director was willing and able to work with large budgets. The 11-minute film has a pretty simple story as a man and woman are looking for a safe place to continue a new life cycle but soon they find themselves under attack by a robot. It's hard to be too critical of this film and it's certainly important to remember that this was the director's first film. With that in mind it's hard to be anything less than impressed as there's certainly a lot of imagination in this thing and for a short of this nature it looks extremely good. I think the biggest flaw are the performances, which are rather lacking and the dialogue that is really, really bad. With a better screenplay I'm sure this thing could have been even better but at the same time I'm sure people are going to be interested in this thing for the special effects. I found them to be pretty good as the robots look real, which is very important and all of the sets look like something from the future. I think the film also benefits from a curiosity factor by seeing things here that would appear in future Cameron movies. One can't help but not see touches of THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS here.
MisterWhiplash
James Cameron apparently got 20 thousand dollars from a group of dentists in order to get the funds for his first short film. It doesn't have much of a plot except that a man is being chased by a giant robot that moves a lot like a construction crane - or a creation from some other dimension (it's hard not to see this coming back in the climax of Aliens and to a smaller extent in the futuristic scenes of The Terminator). What the film lacks is proper acting (I think it's William Wisher, who went on to co-write some of Cameron's films, as the main male character) and actual quality dialog it makes up with dynamic action and very impressive production design and special effects. All of this is Cameron, done with a kind of care and precision and detail that makes it look triple, maybe even more, of how much it actually looks; probably why Cameron got to work for Roger Corman right after this. It's so impressive to look at, from the fighting of the robots and the solid edits, that you almost want to try and forgive the more primitive aspects of the production... almost. Overall though, it's a nice little diddy for fans.
David Gutierrez
I watched this James Cameron's short on Youtube (it was a happy surprise somebody had uploaded it!!) and it really wonder me!. I found out Jim had made this short by reading a Wikipedia article, but watching this robots in a struggle, laser beams and all that jazz, was surprising; it prove how much talented this filmmaker is. I agree with those commonplaces in Cameron's films mentioned before, and I'd add that there's a clear Star-Wars-like background; what's more, our hero bears a strong resemblance to Luke Skywalker in my book (No wonder Jim felt swayed to work in the movie industry after watching this George Lucas's film).
AD
